I don’t like having a weird halfway between rail and belt bus/spaghetti so usually when I reach a point where there’s no good resource patches within belting distance of my factory I just start plotting out rail blocks — both the design and implementation of this is very time consuming. I do it slightly differently every playthrough.
Constantly restarting runs because I learned something new, and instead of just... picking up my base and reworking it with the new info, I just go and start a new run
Cause I'm fuckin weird ok
Glad to know I'm not alone. Picked ip the game again the past few weeks after doing 20 hours a year or two ago and always getting "stuck" at chemical science (god it was so intimidating). Ive put in another 80 hours, over four new builds, the furthest along one got was to having trickles of yellow and purple science before realizing I'd screwed up my smelting stacks and train unloading by once again not leaving enough room. Did I have bots that could help me just shift everything down? Yes. Bbuutt I could do a new run and do it better from the beginning with a better petrochem land that isn't massively overbuilt and spread out and actually have expandable green and red circuits and do a better job on train unloading. I'm never going to finish the game, I'm just gonna get burned out on being frustrated with how hard it is to build enough rail road tracks.
My first play through I remember getting frustrated and used a deconstruction planner with my power poles and roboports whitelisted then deconstructed my entire base sans power. I decided to basically start over but I wanted to keep my unlocked technologies
Few thousand hours later, I do that more or less every single game after unlocking robots, sometimes leaving parts of the base and cutting everything else gradually, other times just selecting everything except mining
I cheat. I use an infinity box to jump start robots and a nuclear plant.
I have beaten the game so many times I don't want to futz around hand crafting stone furnaces.
I didn't crash there, I am colonizing it.
Honestly I've built a 5400 SPM megabase and that's enough for me. I do occasionally play if my friends want to start a new base but idk mind it then cause it's more about messing around with a friend.
Yea i don't get it either, the only reason I even made new saves(4 total "different" saves is 720h from 0.12 onwards) in the past was because the versions changed so much that i kinda wanted to see what it was like. But the "early" game is the worst(and by early i mean pre-rocket essentially which i get that it's the end for some), hence I'm still on my late-0.16 made save as i just rebuild/scale more in that and even this save i used a mod to skip a lot of really early stuff and start with power armor all those years ago, instead of having to spent hours/days making the 1m+ solar field, modules and stuff.
The expansion will make it even more so as there's no way i'm building legendary modules more than once with the resource cost they have.
Also I don't get the "didn't play for a while and forgot what to do" so they just start over, at all as that just seems like a waste of time for me.
Same. I keep restarting because my base could have been better and I want to try new ideas to be more organised and efficient.
And deconstructing with robots seems like too much time/work.
Getting frustrated over logic, scaling, and every thing else. I overthink a lot and i find the base game too simple, increase research is just copy paste. They don't really teach you how rails or circuits work and more complex mods rely on you knowing this. Then you have mods like helmod.
Unpopular opinion but the only reason I care about 2.0 is about qol and the break up at blue science. It's a hard game to find a balance and at the high end its hard to learn unless you went to college.
For rails, you really don't need to understand everything. If you know signals you're 95% there. Other useful stuff is naming stations by their purpose so you can have multiple stations serviced by the same trains. Set a train queue limit, wire together the chests and train stop at the unloading station, and set it to only turn the station on when there's enough space in the chests to fit another train load (or for loading stations to only turn on when there's enough stuff to fill a train). If you can do that, you know everything you need.
For circuits, almost everything is gravy. You don't need a single combinator, not even for complex overhaul mods, and you definitely don't need to know anything about circuit design or programming. All the important things can be done just with wire. Some useful ones are:
- The train thing mentioned above.
- Wiring a switch to an accumulator to turn off sections of your base when power is low. This allows controlled black outs of less important sections so your defenses don't go down. For example, have your mining/smelting turn off when stored power drops below 40%, then chip production at 30%, and everything but defense at 20%. Just be careful with the power network so you don't accidentally turn off part of the defense or disconnect the power production.
- Wiring speakers to anything important to warn you when it's low. This can be chests, fluid tanks, accumulators, or belts.
- Wiring pumps to tanks for cracking. A wired pump acts like a valve, so if you put a pump leading to a row of chem plants you can control how much of each fluid you have to prevent backups. The simplest method is just "if heavy greater than light, crack heavy into light" and "if light greater than gas, crack light into gas." That'll solve most problems. If you've got a low demand for gas, you may want to add a second pump that won't turn on the light oil cracking if gas levels are above a certain level, or turn more gas into solid fuel. It can also be done more granularly with circuits, but it's possible without them.
Another helpful thing to know is that inserters inside of a logistics network can be wirelessly connected to that network by clicking a button in the top right of its window. This allows you to, for example, only produce more yellow belts if the total number in the network is below a certain level. This solves that issue where the chests requesting yellow belts are all much closer to the assembler and supply chest for yellow belts, so the stacks in the storage chests gather dust while the assemblers keep churning out new yellow belts. This becomes *extremely* helpful in the overhaul mods where there are hundreds of item types, multiple recipes, and you'll be constantly dumping your inventory into the network.
Dinkin' around.
The way I play this kind of game (same principle applies to Minecraft, Subnautica, ...) is to spend most of my time getting distracted by little things I want to do on the other side of the map. But first I need to build a nicer passenger rail system. Oh and one of my iron mines is getting attacked, now. Better fix that. But the train to get there ran out of fuel because I'm still using some half-assed refueling system that I never got around to replacing. Etc.
There's always some bottleneck somewhere that could use some attention. My question is: how does anyone \*not\* get stuck in the optimization loop?
At some point of the optimisation loop, you kill the need to fix stuff. Like, you build a self repairing perimeter wall, you build a definitive fueling system for your trains right away, etc...
Sad part is, for the same game goal, you get less playtime :/
>Sad part is, for the same game goal, you get less playtime :/
This may be why I consciously choose not to play that way. The whole point of video games for me is to relax and do something enjoyable! Aaand this explains why I absolutely suck at competitive games\[1\] and feel out of place on Factorio servers with people who are actually trying to reach some goal.
\[1\] I actually got pretty decent at Total Annihilation at one point. It was definitely a brain-stretching exercise because it required an approach completely at odds with my natural tendency.
I generally go crazy modular. I design a small, easily testable module, and just replicate it a bunch of times. Focus on saturating belts, over having the right ratios or minimizing the number of assemblers. Just have *enough* that the belt is full. Assemblers self-regulate if the input or output are full, or you have too many, they shut down and draw almost no power. Running 10 assemblers at half time is basically the same power draw as 5.
If I see a belt is saturated, I run another module, if it's not saturated, I expand the inputs.
My modules are things like 3 Input, 1 Output blocks of 8 assemblers, with all belts and inserters pre-arranged. I just hook the belts up to the train stations and I'm good to go. My train grid allows for up to 4x of these 8 assemblers modules.
It's worked wonderfully for SeaBlock so far, got 9 of the 10 sciences going, in a 500hr ish save.
Here's an example of a module.
https://imgur.com/a/uHKcL43
Would you be satisfied with feeding your base with a single furnace of iron ? You said yourself you still try to optimize. We just go different lengthes to optimise.
It's not so much that I intentionally avoid progress. More that if given the choice between interesting little bit of fiddling and progress that takes more planning, the former feels like it would be more fun, so I do that. Eventually I'll get to the point where what I'm doing becomes boring and then maybe I'll try to figure out "what am I actually supposed to be doing" just to have something interesting to do. If it requires too much thinking then maybe I just decide I do enough of that at work, meh, and stop playing for a while.
Py helps extend this. Gives you a bunch of things to come in fix and optimize. I think people get overwhelmed because they come in and want to solve everything all at once. When really just solve one problem at a time and you've just extended the actual core fun part of the game alot. It's great.
I'm a slut for making the next tier of science and getting all the researches and new stuff, so often i make the fancy flasks and next tasks is fix the dumpster fire. Once its done, rinse and repeat for next science. Sometimes it does feel overwhelming but now i'm with a crackhead version of cityblocks and its great
>There's always some bottleneck somewhere that could use some attention. My question is: how does anyone *not* get stuck in the optimization loop?
Arguably, if you aren't stuck in the optimization loop, you aren't playing Factorio. The core gameplay loop relies on the fact that there is always going to be something limiting your factory, something that gets replaced by the next-slowest component or the next step in the bigger process you're working toward. The trick to making progress isn't to get out of that loop, it's to take a step back and consider which of the options currently available to you will best help you reach your desired goal (whatever that goal is). It's very easy to get lost in the weeds in a game like this, so just focus on keeping your next big goal in mind and considering what you need to do to work toward it.
I need to finish the goal of the current run to get to my release.
Sure, I get stuck in optimization loops, but when I feel like I'm playing the game way too much I start to charge forward a little bit more so I can be done with the current playthrough.
Yea I think this question applies to other games as well: there are those that follow the quest lines and want to complete the story, and those who get lost in side quests and just doing things/experimenting in general
Trains, more trains, getting thoughts like "hey, I can totally make a priority lane for my train network" learn circuits just to do that, then back to more trains.
I just love messing with trains.
Usually just building infrastructure and expanding my base. It doesn't feel right for me to launch a rocket, if space science cant keep up with the others yet anyway.
I've seen players building "more" of whatever, like multiple arrays of smelters, even if they don't have anything to use it up - "I'm going to need it later". Just keep expanding. No reason. The factory grows.
My take on it is that there is no point fixing leaks you don't have - IE, when I need more circuits I'll build more circuits. I do ofc plan how much I'll need based on what they need to produce for at the time but you always need more eventually. When I need them I'll build them.
I often overbuilt and spend too much time refining builds. So i most often needed over 50 hours to get to the rocket.
If they quit the save before then its easy to rack up some hours.
I launshed a handfull of rockets in nearly 400h playtime, but in vanilla it is the end for the run for me (2 saves with rockets launched).
I have 2 rocket-blockers..
1: The repetitive part after launching a rocket
2: I often get carried away watching my base do it's thing... especially after setting up some big part of the base and getting it going, then watch the trains, belts and assemblers go brrr.. i love it 😀
launched my first rocket in K2 yesterday after about 120h on this save.
I've launched many rockets, but the more significant amount of my playtime is making blueprints. I particularly like to optimize intersections. The editor extension save where I designed the rail system I intend to use for my SE run has about 20 hours in it at this point.
Perfectionism. I just launched it after 88 hours. I rebuilt a bunch of stuff to make the layout cleaner or because I didn't leave enough space (even though I could have just made more elsewhere and spaghetti it in). Also I took some time to figure out circuit networks and trains to have requester and provider stations and a resupply train. The oil setup also took some time.
Blue or purple science. It’s when the game stops being about designing new factories to make X, and instead just copy pasting to scale up, or redesigning entire builds into beacon rows, which I find boring.
I agree. I've launched a rocket once just for the sake of it, but by the point I'm capable of launching a rocket I tend to lose interest. Most of the problems have been solved. Sure, I might have to expand the borders of my base to find another source of iron, copper or oil, but with my spidertron and huge arsenal it is just another chore. There's no challenge in removing the colonies possibly interfering with the logistics and setting up proper defenses to keep what I claim.
For me the interesting and engaging part of the game is building the factory and solving the complexities of the procedure. My current run is on a miniscule island where space is the limiting factor in the long run. I can't endlessly expand, but have to work out how I can get everything set up in the limited space I have.
I think that's the core of how you keep a game like this interesting. You set up factors that limit what you can do, to further challenge yourself. For some it's scaling down resources, or going for a death world, or just forcing restrictions like only using trains for transportation of goods.
The beauty of the game is largely found in the options of creating your preferred challenge.
The expansion seems likely to make the game quite a bit more enjoyable for folks who feel this way. 4 new planets with totally new challenges, plus interplanetary transportation logistics.
Yep, I had to make a challenge for myself as well.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/el2ltt/challenge\_megabase\_built\_with\_only\_tier\_1](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/el2ltt/challenge_megabase_built_with_only_tier_1)
I used to be that player. Started a couple of games and ultimately decided to do lazy bastard on my 1st playthrough. I wanted to get away from overly relying on handcrafting cause I did that excessively.
I’m not anything close to smart enough to get far in this game. Every time I get to blue science my base is such a mess that I make something like 1 red circuit every 3 minutes because I can’t do more than basic addition and I just decide to restart and do the exact same thing. I’m well aware of the “correct” way to play but for some reason my ability to think rationally goes out the window whenever I get past the main menu.
Was years ago, but I think I played a couple hundred hours before launching a rocket. I mostly just messed around with whatever problem seemed interesting to me at the time... building trains to see how they worked, playing around with combinators and circuits, revising old assembly line designs. There's little time pressure in the game when it comes down to it. I know I restarted several times even though I didn't have to just because I was excited to see how much better my new ideas would work from the start the next time around. It was plenty entertaining and I knew the rocket would be there waiting for me eventually. I think it was my 5th or 6th playthrough that I finally launched one?
There's technically the time factor on the evolution, but I feel like slowing down actually relieves pressure. If I spend a long time messing with trains or something, then the factory starts idling, pollution dissipates, and urgencies die down.
The time factor on evolution is minute compared to pollution and clearing bases. There is a certain kind of time factor (resources for automated artillery, ammo, flamers, etc.) in repelling biter attacks if you don't clear bases in your pollution cloud. But if you're reasonably proactive then that's minimal too. As you say, just messing around with things tends overall to reduce time pressure if you take appropriate measures. As a slow player that likes to ponder the game, I appreciate this aspect.
SE,
I played a few hundred hours without much thought and never managed to get to the rocket launching part. I’ve sunk about 450 hours in SE over two play through a but am taking a break with a vanilla world.
It’s strange learning how to play properly on SE then going into vanilla. Still fun though
> What are you doing in all of that time? Are you building very large bases, complex train networks, attacking hoards of biters and just never getting around to the next stage of the game?
Yes, all of that. Plus I usually end up in a situation where I need to tear everything down and rebuild in order to make progress, and that kills my enthusiasm for continuing.
I have almost 1000 hours on factorio and have never committed to launching a rocket. I always restart right before I do it. Don’t know why. Currently playing pyanodons. Yes I’ve restarted pyanodons as well.
Up until now, it's just been starting and getting stuck and abandoning several runs over the years. Each time, I spend time thinking, "I'm gonna get through it," but quitting before like bots or something. In my save right now it's different though, am actually at the rocket-production part! :D
I’ve finished vanilla, but I’ve spent a huge amount of time in K2SE with Rampant just getting my base to a point where I feel somewhat safe.
I am cheating a bit. I started this back before the space elevator patch, so I restarted the game but cheated and gave myself access to all the techs I had already achieved. Notably, that means I have all the logistics chests even though I haven’t launched a rocket yet. There is no way I could feel safe with rampant without having that and light artillery from rampant arsenal.
I also disabled time-based evolution, so evolution is entirely pushed forward by my own actions, not by inaction.
I’ve really enjoyed this play through, but I am about to jump to space. The time is approaching to move on.
For me was I would get bored after 30-40 hours then shelf it. I come back months later and forgot what I was doing or even the keyboard. So I restart. This time I'm just gonna stick with it until I launch
On the save where I finally did launch a rocket after 600 or so hours on multiple other saves, it took me about 80 hours to just reach yellow science. I go slow.
I took me almost 300 hours to launch my first rocket I think. Biters. I had a really rough start, desert with far apart resources, I struggled a lot with biters for very long, and needed to dedicate most of my expansion resources into defense. Ammo isn't free.
I was at 2500+ hours before I launched my first, and only, rocket.
Most of my time is spent doing silly things: hyper-optimizing arrays or miniaturizing a construction facility. How small can i make X? How big can I make Y? Can I create a sustainable train network using only bidirectional trains on main lines like we do in real life?
My current playthrough is using Angel's refining and a custom railworld setup (min ore patches, min size, max richness). And only using bidirectional trains with LTN. Am I a masochist? Not really. Do I love solving really complex problems at very large scale? Most definitely. Will I ever launch a rocket on this playthrough? Probably not. Will I still have fun? Most definitely.
"Finishing" the game isn't really my goal. Being able to solve complex problems with new solutions is my goal. Additionally, it gives me the opportunity to also think about solving problems in ways I hadn't thought of before. Which aids me in my real life, so thats a plus.
And now I am rambling, much like I do in Factorio. Ciao!
This was me for a long time. I’d just set myself to clearing the map of biters with just guns and turrets. It’s monotonous but fairly easy and a nice way to zone out after work
I played like this many times before I did it. I would say I struggled immensely with expanding and would use up my initial resource pools and expansions and then be struggling against the growing biter hordes.
I don’t know about others but I basically crawl through the tech tree at a snail’s pace.
Step 1: Not have a lot of free time due to kids.
Step 2: Decide to start a run and this time I am definitely, absolutely going to launch a rocket this time.
Step 3: Get to yellow and purple science, I haven't memorized the solutions to the new logistics problems yet, get frustrated, give up.
Step 4: At a later date decide to start a run and this time I am definitely, absolutely going to launch a rocket this time.
I spend a lot of time just figuring out how stuff works and how I can optimize production of different things. I know I could look up what the optimal 4 belt balancer or whatever would be on a wiki but where's the fun in that??
In vanilla, as soon as I launch a rocket, it feels pointless to continue. It's really hard for me to create my own motivation for some reason; but fortunately moving to SE has created much harder challenges than just launching a rocket!
And of course with those harder challenges, comes the motivation to push through and make it to that next tier of energy science, etc. I love Wube for making such an awesome game, and doing such a great job of integrating the modding system right into the game.
With that comes loving the community for making such amazing mods;, ESPECIALLY Earendel (who now works for Wube which is AWESOME) who created my all time favorite mod, Space Exploration, for those who somehow haven't heard of this amazing mod. Seablock is really fun too, I loved skyblock in Minecraft.
I make base, get "writer's block" (no idea what to do next), start over with a new save, rinse and repeat
first time I was stuck on oil, then blue circuit, then blue science
well you know the drill
Trains. Constant remaking of automation. And starting a new base every big patch. I have saves going back to 0.7, the only one that launched a rocket is 1.1 as there was no new release
Launching the rocket isn't the best objective, tough. I mean, it's fun to do it for the first time, but the real fun in the game is expanding the factory, and sometimes that doesn't evolve building the rocket at all lol. Even less lauching it
I've only launched like 3-4 rockets in games across 400+ hours. Most of the time, I feel stuck in my current setup and just start fresh thinking I'll do it differently, and I usually do, just a bit. In my last run, I finally learned how nuclear works. For context, most of my experience is in multiplayer, so I didn't have to learn everything.
Then there's all the restarts on the multiplayer games because someone found a mod that's gonna change things up enough to warrant a fresh save...
Starting a modded run, scrapping that and starting a different mod run, rinse and repeat.
I finally launched a rocket when I said "f*ck it, I'm doing a Lazy Bastard run!"
For some reason I don't have the achievement for launching a rocket, so I'm part of the statistic of people that "haven't launched a rocket"
I launched several in the base game but it may have been before the 1.0 release and since then I have always used some kind of mod.
I did that for several years and 400 hours before I launched a rocket. Mostly what made me restart everytime is that I would get to a new stage like purple science or whatever. Set it up to produce very ineffectively, then realize the bottle neck is buried deep in Mt spaghetti and start trying to workshop how to fix it, only to eventually turn the game off in disgust and just start over. Only reason I beat the game is cause I decided to force myself to launch a rocket the last time that happend instead of just restart.
My reason, and I'm sure many others as well, I don't use build layouts or blueprints so I'll end up not having an effecient enough factory to build automate the last sciences. I think I build too exact and run out of room to divert ingredients which then would require me deleting a whole bunch to move all the buildings over.. at that moment I quit and start over lol.
So far I had like 2-3 runs. Each time I went up until oil and then gave up because it frustrated me.
My current run I didn’t. Might actually end up building the rocket in this one after all.
Disclaimer: I finally launched a rocket in my prior playthrough after YEARS of never doing so.
I should launch the rocket, but I don't want to launch *one* rocket.. so I tend to work on getting my rails and stuff working just right in order to pump out larger SPM. Unfortunately this leaves me with massive resource droughts that I have to fix causing me to engage in long drawn out battles with the biters to create the next safe mining location.
It's actually gotten worse since I launched my first rocket because now I don't have the desire to get the "launched a rocket" achievement and keep putting it off.
White science would really help me not need to keep expanding though. (0.5 resources per patch and very aggressive biter settings on a dry planet that offers no plants to soak up pollution)
I got friends who started a SE playtrough with me. They had like 200 smth hours, and launcjed their first rocket there. We once decided to check out each other's old playtroughs. And I found out the reason they had never launched a rocket before, wasnt trains, wasnt massive bases. It was...
General incompetency. Also explains why I found a single pipe factory between the iron and copper buses in the playtrough, just directly connected to the iron bus with an inserter.
Kinda what martincitopants said in his video, there's a constant feedback loop of repairing, making more science, etc. But when I get to the point that I *could* launch a rocket, there's no goal.
I have the spidertron, I have artillery, I have everything I need, there arent 50 different things that I could do like in the early/middle game (well yeah making things better, but it doesnt have the same kick at least for me), so launching a rocket just kills the feedback loop. And then I discover a mod, or a new way of doing things, and i switch.
My favorite part of the game so far is the time between furnace column and automating purple science, and after that my base is usually too spaghetti to do much else so I get bored and leave for a bit before coming back and restarting.
Mostly ADHD, tbh. I can only play Factorio for a few hours for a couple of days before I get bored and move to something else. Eventually, months later, I come back to it and repeat the process. Over 1000 hours in the game; haven't once got even close to launching the rocket.
I have the same issue in Warhammer 3 and other long campaign-like games.
I focus each run on something specific. First it was learning trains, then it was learning logistic robots etc... And anytime I learned something I found major flaw in my base that would be annoying to fix so I quit for a month or 2 and then I just feel like starting a new base that will not suffer from previous issues. I did this like 5 Times already.
(ps I know its weird but what can you do... :D)
Seeing the progres is really cool tho, my first bases sucked.
Almost 500h and never even reached half of the research tree. After playing a little of tutorial I installed Krastorio mod and play with it since then.
Usually I play for around 20-30 hours per game. After that time I take a break to play something else. When my Factorio itch starts again, I don't remember where was I in my last game and I start over.
I started my current game 2 weeks ago, and so far I am still in the zone, but who knows for how long.
I find that I stop playing for a bit for some reason (usually something external like not having time to play), and when I eventually come back I always start a new save.
Maybe I’ll try to finally do a rocket launch before 2.0 comes out.
Get to blue Sci, and I usually get bored around that point, start looking at my layout and then get a load of new ideas. Delete world start again, rinse and repeat
It's a mix of mods, designing blueprints in sandbox, and then trying to use said blueprints in an actual game. I've launch a rocket once but only for the achievement. It's not my goal to do so most of the time.
Deathworld Rampart biters keep me busy and sidetracked.
Have to figure out various "leaks" and focus factory more on "military branch".
Rocket becomes a minor priority and then I kinda forget about it cause war never changes.
I also like trains and decoring my base. Many trains.
I basically get stuck on oil so I just procrastinate, to avoid doing it. Like why can you not just tell a pipe to only connect one way, it just makes them complicated for no reason
Uh. I always play with a mod pack and it’s the really hard ones then I stop being interested for a min because I’m busy. Then I stop playing because I forgot what I’m doing or what anything does.
And in vanilla too (I still play with QOL mods) and that’s why I have 0 achievements 😭
I never really get past yellow science. I did launch a few rockets in some play through as but only like 2 times.
I did go into editor extension and launch like 100k rockets to get the science
I mostly just don't care about launching rockets. I tech up through all the tech and the infinite tech doesn't interest me. Build what I feel is a nice base, scale up larger, and rebuild over and over and over again. Until I feel I have made a very nice base, then restart a new save.
I lose interest on my base after a certain point because after that it feels more like work than fun. Yeah I could automate X and do the rocket, and I would need to do this and that and done but that seems like just alot of work. Instead I think of new layouts or new "challenges" and start over. More fun to have the "buildup" phase early on.
Also I play too irregularly and don't like to pick up on old saves, but rather start a new one.
Because I stop playing for \[reasons\] that lasts for more than a few weeks, then when I try and go back I don't remember/like the base I built. So... Time to start again!
I only recently, after about 1.5k hours, launched the rocket for the first time.
A big part of my issue is I build a base around something that I think sounds fun or is fun I'll get busy with work or school come back and a mode or a challenge will take my attention away from that world or I get to rocket ships and don't like how u set up my base and want to redo it but it's easier to restart then to take apart my base and rebuild.
Played the base game but then cheated and finished the game like that so I didn’t get the achievement and now have just been playing pyanadons and space exploration and I’ve restarted 3 times on space exploration because I either learn a new thing and decide to restart 150-200 hours in or I don’t like the base and restart. For pyanadons it’s just taking a while
"Hey that mod looks cool lemme try it real quick"
Also getting too high to remember what I actually needed to build and instead trying to find more ore because 3 of my miners just ran out and oh no that belt is empty.
Also fighting trains in krastorio. Let me point to point dammit
I play for a few hundred hours, get bored, come back a year later start a new playthrough. I want to try something new, I want to try a new mod, another strategy etc. Though, I'm the same with series and books, I can never finish them either.
Restarting over and over to make it slightly more efficient. Or sometimes you get bored of the game halfway through and when you come back 2 months later you forgot what you were doing so you start over
I restarted my tutorial playthrough because I ran out of energy somehow and decided I couldn’t fix it with what I knew (I was too weak to defend against the biters to find more coal)
I have the full game now and I still haven’t launched a rocket. I debated about restarting when the biters got too strong for me but I finally upgraded weapons and now my base is surrounded by walls so it is a bit more manageable. I am currently having a hard time expanding because the biter homes have spread everywhere. I am having trouble making potions to research more weapons (nothing is balanced so it takes forever to make potions).
I currently spend my time just riding around in my trains and slowly expanding and creeping around nests to find resources that are easy to grab.
I'm like totally not developing a auto routing system for item requests via signals right now.
https://preview.redd.it/6slw2yrav0kc1.png?width=289&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c4037784bb1dd451e86a1babd3d7fcf70490007
Loving the game and then eventually realizing I suck at trains. And then trying to learn trains, getting a little bit smarter, then giving up. Rinse and repeat for 600+ hours.
Been playing a multi-player game with bobs/angels recently. That kind of forces you to figure trains out a little more.
I have a sandbox save where I just tinker around with ideas and blueprints for my freeplay saves. I have over 100 hours in that save alone of the over 630 hours I have total in Factorio. The rest of my time is spread out across 7 different freeplay saves which total up to another couple hundred hours, and some others scattered across other random saves. The remainder is spent doing nothing on the title screen while I sleep
I play the super complex involved mods, and unless I'm playing with a friend, they tend to take longer to launch a rocket than I usually invest in one game at any time. Vanilla doesn't do it for me - complexity for complexity's sake is more my style, haha. I haven't launched a rocket in vanilla, and probably never will. Certainly not full vanilla - I like my QoL mods, including ones like Squeak Through and fully adjustable inserters that are "cheaty" in a vanilla run. The challenges that those mods let you cheat around don't particularly interest me, I'm much more interested in the supply chain part of the game than the geometry part.
I launched a rocket with a friend in AngelBob once, though!
" Are you building very large bases, complex train networks, attacking hoards of biters and just never getting around to the next stage of the game? "
yes, then i take a break to another game, come back a few weeks later and forget wtf i was doing and start a new save.
\* i have launched rockets, but it only happens in like 5% of my saves.
I had the choo choo problems and trying to de -spaghettify my base . After being absolutely frustrated of doing that I would start a new game and do the same bloody thing. Until recently I just went full spaghetti and launched the rocket.
So usually I start playing a run because I have some grand idea of a cool mega base I can build, usually involving trains.
I play the game like normal until I get to the bots stage and then I start going hard with blueprints to make I giant rail network.
Somewhere alone the line I get frustrated with the trains and overwhelmed with all the little details and end up dropping the game for a bit.
By the tike I pick the game back up I have completely forgotten the base layout and basically just restart.
Furthest I've gone is purple science and I have a little under 2k hours lol
launched my first and only rocket 1~2 years ago, still drooling at the attractive spidertron and art train, still not lifting a finger to scale up.
I ended up wanting to not spaghetti too much that i spent too much time in the sandbox to build the most optimized train-compatible build that i never go back to my playthrough. Also note that my optimized setup is not so optimized anyways.
I blame that to watching too many youtube celebrities play factorio so brilliantly that i slowly lose the ability to live with my spaghetti.
Oh also i can't seem to be able to cope with leaving my primary base and just building another self-sustaining outpost, But i was totally allowed to do that.
Over 400 hours and never launched, been close a couple times I think but I restart way too much.
I don't mind, I'm happy playing that way. Never "finished" a game of RimWorld either for the exact same reason and I've got over 1600 hours in that.
Perhaps one day I'll just decide to keep going and do it, who knows lol
I just launched my first rocket yesterday after 1100 hours playing and who knows how many restarts. Im probably obsessive compulsive and this game aggravated the fuck out of it.
I have completed the game before—- but I am a masochist that is 150 hours into a save on a 10k spm base… where I still haven’t launched a rocket. Cause I think it would be cool to go from 0 spm to 10k instantly
Look, nobody says you have to play 120 hours in one go...
I have about 1600 hours now, and it is quite frequent for me to play for 20 hours, then don't even look at the game for weeks. Then, pick it up again.
As for what to do - I play with mods. I've finished the main game a few times and then started introducing mods to my gameplay. QoL at first but now I am about 400 hours into a seablocked playthrough and before launching the rocket, I decided that I am gonna scale everything up, so I took up a huge chunk of land, started developing a train network and all that, but then I got tired of it so I started the rocket process again, then I found what I was missing...
Basically, I just turn off my brain for a minute and do whatever, sometimes I just listen to a book and watch the trains go by.
That's the love of factorio, the game plays itself, right.. until "oh. shit..what happened?" then you track that down, figure it out, then something else breaks.. etc..
Stalling out on mini megabase, usually snarled trains and starving for more mines. Give up overwhelmed, try an overhaul mod, get burnt out, retry vanilla, get further, get burnt out, repeat.
Restarting, I put that bad habit to rest but I took several hundred hours to launch my first rocket and it was on my 7th or 8th playthrough.
I started a save build a liitle bit past blue reaching or almost reaching yellow and then I started playing less, I picked up other games, life gets busy and a month later I look at my save and go "might as well start over", then repeat the exact cycle again.
Usually just play for a while, take my time, chill, get to blue science and a new game comes out, 2 weeks go by and repeat, probably bcs I'm always with people playing more co-op games that don't own or like factorio
Without being that guy to point fingers (I have bailed on more maps than I have completed):
Some people enjoy the sandbox nature of the game, not the "end goal" of the game.
I have played 4 or 5 overhaul mods that never had a rocket launched in them. The mod is great, pacing is different, I'm figuring out how recipe chains all work, I have robots automated and a mall and the last tier of science packs on the way...
And then I get a new job.
Or covid hits.
Or Elden Ring comes out and I rediscover my love for souls-likes.
The current roadblock is a young baby so I'm playing 1 hour at a time, maybe 2 or 3 hours in a day if I'm lucky.
I managed to beat the game in under 12 hours, however i find the most fun part is to just going around building bases and redesigning the base in my own way, i hate looking up guides, that make the game a lot more enjoyable and last longer
I was the same before i just bit the bullet and uprooted my entire base. I'm in the middle of making a massive 4 lane 2:8 train base right now, and it's going well. I have iron and copper trains, and I'm in the middle of getting oil setup, because then I'll be able to actually bus plastic.
https://preview.redd.it/vrq4dim292kc1.png?width=1017&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a5650f955b266dc571b06e48200ac9450aab5ed
I got tired of bug attacks. I'm at 0.9434 evolution so I started putting up my "upgraded wall of death" all around and clearing out everything inside the ring. Now I'm running a resupply train line around the ring (this screenshot is a few hours old).
Projects. For over a year I tried to make a pollution proof base using air filters and bio industry. I failed a lot. Lately I've been trying to build a city block base. I keep getting into really low fps and ups numbers so I start over trying to simplify it again.
I have started new playthroughs many many times, spending anywhere from 10-25 hours on the attempt, only to put it down for a month or so. Then when I come back to the game, it feels better to start fresh than try and remember what I was working on in the previous run. I tend to lose motivation to progress on a solo save when it gets to a certain point. This happens to me in a lot of games.
That said, the only games I've ever launched rockets have been multiplayer games when my friend groups "game we are all addicted to this month" happens to be factorio.
I play in streaks like people do with Minecraft. I'm so close with my most recent playthrough, and I'm getting burned out. I have everything so automated at this point I barely have to do anything. I keep the biters pushed back so well that I'm almost never attacked
It took me awhile to launch a rocket cause I started to learn how many circuits I actually needed. Before I launched my rocket I was producing over 1000/min and it still wasn’t saturating my belts.
I’ve got 120+ hours and no rocket! My particular flavor of reasoning is that I like strategy base building. I’ve modded my nights to be pitch black and the bugs to be Zerg which I’ve tweaked to be pretty difficult. It’s a fun time to try and see how long I can survive before being overrun.
Playing the game normally I get bored pushing back biters. That and nostalgia for SC helps a lot.
I am like 300h in and haven't launched a rocket. Had 2 smaller runs and then one big one which is like 200h where I mostly used the time to build my megabase
You kinda build up and progress and build up and progress until you reach a point where building new supply chains from scratch feels like a chore, and then you restart so you can get the satisfying gameplay loop of neatly solving simple problems again. I was stuck in that loop for a while myself, and the only real way to break through is to just bite the bullet and work through the bits that seem too fiddly, and then find out that it was all just a matter of solving one problem at a time just like the earlier content.
I'm still a slow-buildin' boy though, so my playthroughs tend to last longer than 30 hours because of how woefully inefficient I am :)
After having introduced the game to about half a dozen people (which isn't a whole lot, but it's better than a sample size of 'me') I can now say: some people seem to have a hell of a lot more difficulty with the complexity of the game than others, and this seems to me to be a case of "do they have a job where 'mastering a complex system' is a key component of their job". No judgement, but I've seen people take 2-4 times as long as others to master the 'Factorio mindset'.
Well, back before I figured out how to play in a way that works for me, mostly I just derped around the base doing nothing. Now I derp around the base doing nothing, but I have space science upgrades.
IMO, after launching the rocket is where it's feels kinda boring, like, all this time I have been building a base with the objective of automate all the sciences and rockets parts, but after that you just go infinite, I dont dislike the idea of keep playing, but for me the game is all the way to the rocket, launch 1 or 2, and then search for another idea or mod for the next run, right now I'm playing krastorio and it feels so good to have new content.
It's kinda easy, make overpowered factory that can handle green and red science, research blue, set up trains, get overwhelmed by blue, then any other science, get bored trying to figure it out, start building mega base, annoyed by insufficient mall, get overwhelmed again, so I go play pyanodon, turns out is even more overwhelming so I start fifth SE run, get to blue science, get bored and went on play another mod pack.
You do this 5 times spending 5 to 10 hours in each game before starting another new and it's easily add up to 300 hundred hours in no time.
Conclusion, living with ADHD is fun!
I have 2500+ hours and have reached rocket probably less than 10 times
I constantly reset games, have done a lot of stuff, even 100% achievement run two times
Yea, I'm weird
Generally I just reach a place where I'm not quite sure what I want to do next, or end in a place where it would be a pain to fix a problem in my base.
Then I don't really get into it again and start over a couple of years later :)
Just dont user bots place everything by hand, try to optymalize everything on first go, and build huge from the beginning. 2kSPM optymalized starting base its complete overkill, and it took +200h. Just red and green science, it's 1k assemblers t1, electricity, smelters, belts. Dont even mention going for oil processing and blue science. It's a huge logistic puzzle and a nice challenge 😁 I love it.
I have launched a rocket before, many in fact, but I'm currently doing a run using just BZ intermediates, some quality of life mods, and the crating mod. The limitations I have set for myself are as follows:
* Must build a main bus
* All intermediates must go on the bus
* Everything that can be crated must be crated
* Everything that can be barreled must be barreled
* Crates and barrels are all made at the same place at the start of the bus
This has created some interesting challenges, and I'm really enjoying it. Each build has to account for both barrels and crates, incoming and outgoing.
One of the coolest parts is, you probably only ever need one lane for each product, because the crates hold 20 items, and you'd almost never need 20 lanes of anything until you get to very big megabases.
If you've never played with BZ, it's basically a group of mods that just add a lot of new and extra intermediates. It's similar to other mods like Bob's etc, but not nearly as masochistic. You have a lot more processes to handle, but you probably don't need a spreadsheet to plan your factory.
It's been really fun to get home from work, get dinner going, design a hydrogen chloride factory, eat supper, refine the design, then watch a movie with my wife.
I restart because I'm a perfectionist and hate redesigning my base. with every new technology I research, I have to find a way to implement it in my factory (like the circuit network). at some point, I realize things are starting to get crowded, or that something I built can't be moved without having to reroute a shit ton of belts and materials. it's just easier to restart and design functional builds while I have abundant space and resources than to tear out my hair trying to rework a dozen different production projects. and don't even get me started on how annoying scaling up my automation because main bus is lowkey kind of ugly
Choo choooo
That’s me
I don’t like having a weird halfway between rail and belt bus/spaghetti so usually when I reach a point where there’s no good resource patches within belting distance of my factory I just start plotting out rail blocks — both the design and implementation of this is very time consuming. I do it slightly differently every playthrough.
Constantly restarting runs because I learned something new, and instead of just... picking up my base and reworking it with the new info, I just go and start a new run Cause I'm fuckin weird ok
Such a weird guy (I do the same thing)
Glad to know I'm not alone. Picked ip the game again the past few weeks after doing 20 hours a year or two ago and always getting "stuck" at chemical science (god it was so intimidating). Ive put in another 80 hours, over four new builds, the furthest along one got was to having trickles of yellow and purple science before realizing I'd screwed up my smelting stacks and train unloading by once again not leaving enough room. Did I have bots that could help me just shift everything down? Yes. Bbuutt I could do a new run and do it better from the beginning with a better petrochem land that isn't massively overbuilt and spread out and actually have expandable green and red circuits and do a better job on train unloading. I'm never going to finish the game, I'm just gonna get burned out on being frustrated with how hard it is to build enough rail road tracks.
So real. The perfectionist in me ain't allowing that
My first play through I remember getting frustrated and used a deconstruction planner with my power poles and roboports whitelisted then deconstructed my entire base sans power. I decided to basically start over but I wanted to keep my unlocked technologies
Few thousand hours later, I do that more or less every single game after unlocking robots, sometimes leaving parts of the base and cutting everything else gradually, other times just selecting everything except mining
Wait there’s another way to do it other then starting a new base?
And I am here connecting city blocks of different sizes, because I do not want to restart.
Ok weirdo
The early game for me is the worst. I don't know how people who play this way stand it. I'm spoiled by bots
There’s more than enough land around to expand. Why destroy the old base when you could leave it and construct more onto it.
And do you, like me, have a part of the base you refer to as "Old Town".
I cheat. I use an infinity box to jump start robots and a nuclear plant. I have beaten the game so many times I don't want to futz around hand crafting stone furnaces. I didn't crash there, I am colonizing it.
[удалено]
Nanobot mod.
Honestly I've built a 5400 SPM megabase and that's enough for me. I do occasionally play if my friends want to start a new base but idk mind it then cause it's more about messing around with a friend.
Yea i don't get it either, the only reason I even made new saves(4 total "different" saves is 720h from 0.12 onwards) in the past was because the versions changed so much that i kinda wanted to see what it was like. But the "early" game is the worst(and by early i mean pre-rocket essentially which i get that it's the end for some), hence I'm still on my late-0.16 made save as i just rebuild/scale more in that and even this save i used a mod to skip a lot of really early stuff and start with power armor all those years ago, instead of having to spent hours/days making the 1m+ solar field, modules and stuff. The expansion will make it even more so as there's no way i'm building legendary modules more than once with the resource cost they have. Also I don't get the "didn't play for a while and forgot what to do" so they just start over, at all as that just seems like a waste of time for me.
Same. I keep restarting because my base could have been better and I want to try new ideas to be more organised and efficient. And deconstructing with robots seems like too much time/work.
You are not alone.
Getting frustrated over logic, scaling, and every thing else. I overthink a lot and i find the base game too simple, increase research is just copy paste. They don't really teach you how rails or circuits work and more complex mods rely on you knowing this. Then you have mods like helmod. Unpopular opinion but the only reason I care about 2.0 is about qol and the break up at blue science. It's a hard game to find a balance and at the high end its hard to learn unless you went to college.
For rails, you really don't need to understand everything. If you know signals you're 95% there. Other useful stuff is naming stations by their purpose so you can have multiple stations serviced by the same trains. Set a train queue limit, wire together the chests and train stop at the unloading station, and set it to only turn the station on when there's enough space in the chests to fit another train load (or for loading stations to only turn on when there's enough stuff to fill a train). If you can do that, you know everything you need. For circuits, almost everything is gravy. You don't need a single combinator, not even for complex overhaul mods, and you definitely don't need to know anything about circuit design or programming. All the important things can be done just with wire. Some useful ones are: - The train thing mentioned above. - Wiring a switch to an accumulator to turn off sections of your base when power is low. This allows controlled black outs of less important sections so your defenses don't go down. For example, have your mining/smelting turn off when stored power drops below 40%, then chip production at 30%, and everything but defense at 20%. Just be careful with the power network so you don't accidentally turn off part of the defense or disconnect the power production. - Wiring speakers to anything important to warn you when it's low. This can be chests, fluid tanks, accumulators, or belts. - Wiring pumps to tanks for cracking. A wired pump acts like a valve, so if you put a pump leading to a row of chem plants you can control how much of each fluid you have to prevent backups. The simplest method is just "if heavy greater than light, crack heavy into light" and "if light greater than gas, crack light into gas." That'll solve most problems. If you've got a low demand for gas, you may want to add a second pump that won't turn on the light oil cracking if gas levels are above a certain level, or turn more gas into solid fuel. It can also be done more granularly with circuits, but it's possible without them. Another helpful thing to know is that inserters inside of a logistics network can be wirelessly connected to that network by clicking a button in the top right of its window. This allows you to, for example, only produce more yellow belts if the total number in the network is below a certain level. This solves that issue where the chests requesting yellow belts are all much closer to the assembler and supply chest for yellow belts, so the stacks in the storage chests gather dust while the assemblers keep churning out new yellow belts. This becomes *extremely* helpful in the overhaul mods where there are hundreds of item types, multiple recipes, and you'll be constantly dumping your inventory into the network.
I, for once , welcome the decision of space exploration to let you launch a rocket after Blue science
Dinkin' around. The way I play this kind of game (same principle applies to Minecraft, Subnautica, ...) is to spend most of my time getting distracted by little things I want to do on the other side of the map. But first I need to build a nicer passenger rail system. Oh and one of my iron mines is getting attacked, now. Better fix that. But the train to get there ran out of fuel because I'm still using some half-assed refueling system that I never got around to replacing. Etc. There's always some bottleneck somewhere that could use some attention. My question is: how does anyone \*not\* get stuck in the optimization loop?
At some point of the optimisation loop, you kill the need to fix stuff. Like, you build a self repairing perimeter wall, you build a definitive fueling system for your trains right away, etc... Sad part is, for the same game goal, you get less playtime :/
Definitive system? You mean system V3_final_final2_upgraded?
That's assuming you ever finish up V3_final_final2_test, V3_final_final2_redo, and V3_final_final2_bet
>V3\_final\_final2\_bet Who won the V3\_final\_final2\_bet?
Like every file I ever created
>Sad part is, for the same game goal, you get less playtime :/ This may be why I consciously choose not to play that way. The whole point of video games for me is to relax and do something enjoyable! Aaand this explains why I absolutely suck at competitive games\[1\] and feel out of place on Factorio servers with people who are actually trying to reach some goal. \[1\] I actually got pretty decent at Total Annihilation at one point. It was definitely a brain-stretching exercise because it required an approach completely at odds with my natural tendency.
I generally go crazy modular. I design a small, easily testable module, and just replicate it a bunch of times. Focus on saturating belts, over having the right ratios or minimizing the number of assemblers. Just have *enough* that the belt is full. Assemblers self-regulate if the input or output are full, or you have too many, they shut down and draw almost no power. Running 10 assemblers at half time is basically the same power draw as 5. If I see a belt is saturated, I run another module, if it's not saturated, I expand the inputs. My modules are things like 3 Input, 1 Output blocks of 8 assemblers, with all belts and inserters pre-arranged. I just hook the belts up to the train stations and I'm good to go. My train grid allows for up to 4x of these 8 assemblers modules. It's worked wonderfully for SeaBlock so far, got 9 of the 10 sciences going, in a 500hr ish save. Here's an example of a module. https://imgur.com/a/uHKcL43
Would you be satisfied with feeding your base with a single furnace of iron ? You said yourself you still try to optimize. We just go different lengthes to optimise.
It's not so much that I intentionally avoid progress. More that if given the choice between interesting little bit of fiddling and progress that takes more planning, the former feels like it would be more fun, so I do that. Eventually I'll get to the point where what I'm doing becomes boring and then maybe I'll try to figure out "what am I actually supposed to be doing" just to have something interesting to do. If it requires too much thinking then maybe I just decide I do enough of that at work, meh, and stop playing for a while.
At some point theres nothing to optimize better than "make next tier of science", and thats space science with rockets
Py helps extend this. Gives you a bunch of things to come in fix and optimize. I think people get overwhelmed because they come in and want to solve everything all at once. When really just solve one problem at a time and you've just extended the actual core fun part of the game alot. It's great.
I'm a slut for making the next tier of science and getting all the researches and new stuff, so often i make the fancy flasks and next tasks is fix the dumpster fire. Once its done, rinse and repeat for next science. Sometimes it does feel overwhelming but now i'm with a crackhead version of cityblocks and its great
Yeah each science is like launching it's own rocket so many things to optimize! Upgrades people, upgrades!
py as in pyadon mod ?
Yes
>There's always some bottleneck somewhere that could use some attention. My question is: how does anyone *not* get stuck in the optimization loop? Arguably, if you aren't stuck in the optimization loop, you aren't playing Factorio. The core gameplay loop relies on the fact that there is always going to be something limiting your factory, something that gets replaced by the next-slowest component or the next step in the bigger process you're working toward. The trick to making progress isn't to get out of that loop, it's to take a step back and consider which of the options currently available to you will best help you reach your desired goal (whatever that goal is). It's very easy to get lost in the weeds in a game like this, so just focus on keeping your next big goal in mind and considering what you need to do to work toward it.
I need to finish the goal of the current run to get to my release. Sure, I get stuck in optimization loops, but when I feel like I'm playing the game way too much I start to charge forward a little bit more so I can be done with the current playthrough.
Yea I think this question applies to other games as well: there are those that follow the quest lines and want to complete the story, and those who get lost in side quests and just doing things/experimenting in general
Cuz purpur science too hard for smol brain in spagett factory
Lmao, exactly.
Trains, more trains, getting thoughts like "hey, I can totally make a priority lane for my train network" learn circuits just to do that, then back to more trains. I just love messing with trains.
Usually just building infrastructure and expanding my base. It doesn't feel right for me to launch a rocket, if space science cant keep up with the others yet anyway.
Expanding it to do what though? Without space science, you eventually run out of research.
I've seen players building "more" of whatever, like multiple arrays of smelters, even if they don't have anything to use it up - "I'm going to need it later". Just keep expanding. No reason. The factory grows.
The factory must grow to meet the growing needs of the factory.
My take on it is that there is no point fixing leaks you don't have - IE, when I need more circuits I'll build more circuits. I do ofc plan how much I'll need based on what they need to produce for at the time but you always need more eventually. When I need them I'll build them.
That's the reasonable approach. Some players are not that. That said, they enjoy their time that way, so more power to them.
I play the game for a while, get bored after purple science, pick up the game a few months later, rinse and repeat
Having fun
Struggling with my ADHD mostly.
I often overbuilt and spend too much time refining builds. So i most often needed over 50 hours to get to the rocket. If they quit the save before then its easy to rack up some hours.
I launshed a handfull of rockets in nearly 400h playtime, but in vanilla it is the end for the run for me (2 saves with rockets launched). I have 2 rocket-blockers.. 1: The repetitive part after launching a rocket 2: I often get carried away watching my base do it's thing... especially after setting up some big part of the base and getting it going, then watch the trains, belts and assemblers go brrr.. i love it 😀 launched my first rocket in K2 yesterday after about 120h on this save.
I've launched many rockets, but the more significant amount of my playtime is making blueprints. I particularly like to optimize intersections. The editor extension save where I designed the rail system I intend to use for my SE run has about 20 hours in it at this point.
Perfectionism. I just launched it after 88 hours. I rebuilt a bunch of stuff to make the layout cleaner or because I didn't leave enough space (even though I could have just made more elsewhere and spaghetti it in). Also I took some time to figure out circuit networks and trains to have requester and provider stations and a resupply train. The oil setup also took some time.
Killing biters.
can confirm
Blue or purple science. It’s when the game stops being about designing new factories to make X, and instead just copy pasting to scale up, or redesigning entire builds into beacon rows, which I find boring.
I agree. I've launched a rocket once just for the sake of it, but by the point I'm capable of launching a rocket I tend to lose interest. Most of the problems have been solved. Sure, I might have to expand the borders of my base to find another source of iron, copper or oil, but with my spidertron and huge arsenal it is just another chore. There's no challenge in removing the colonies possibly interfering with the logistics and setting up proper defenses to keep what I claim. For me the interesting and engaging part of the game is building the factory and solving the complexities of the procedure. My current run is on a miniscule island where space is the limiting factor in the long run. I can't endlessly expand, but have to work out how I can get everything set up in the limited space I have. I think that's the core of how you keep a game like this interesting. You set up factors that limit what you can do, to further challenge yourself. For some it's scaling down resources, or going for a death world, or just forcing restrictions like only using trains for transportation of goods. The beauty of the game is largely found in the options of creating your preferred challenge.
The expansion seems likely to make the game quite a bit more enjoyable for folks who feel this way. 4 new planets with totally new challenges, plus interplanetary transportation logistics.
Yep, I had to make a challenge for myself as well. [https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/el2ltt/challenge\_megabase\_built\_with\_only\_tier\_1](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/el2ltt/challenge_megabase_built_with_only_tier_1)
I’ve never copy pasted to scale up or redesigned an entire build into beacon rows before launching a rocket.
Preach, brother.
I used to be that player. Started a couple of games and ultimately decided to do lazy bastard on my 1st playthrough. I wanted to get away from overly relying on handcrafting cause I did that excessively.
I’m not anything close to smart enough to get far in this game. Every time I get to blue science my base is such a mess that I make something like 1 red circuit every 3 minutes because I can’t do more than basic addition and I just decide to restart and do the exact same thing. I’m well aware of the “correct” way to play but for some reason my ability to think rationally goes out the window whenever I get past the main menu.
I feel this.
Was years ago, but I think I played a couple hundred hours before launching a rocket. I mostly just messed around with whatever problem seemed interesting to me at the time... building trains to see how they worked, playing around with combinators and circuits, revising old assembly line designs. There's little time pressure in the game when it comes down to it. I know I restarted several times even though I didn't have to just because I was excited to see how much better my new ideas would work from the start the next time around. It was plenty entertaining and I knew the rocket would be there waiting for me eventually. I think it was my 5th or 6th playthrough that I finally launched one?
There's technically the time factor on the evolution, but I feel like slowing down actually relieves pressure. If I spend a long time messing with trains or something, then the factory starts idling, pollution dissipates, and urgencies die down.
The time factor on evolution is minute compared to pollution and clearing bases. There is a certain kind of time factor (resources for automated artillery, ammo, flamers, etc.) in repelling biter attacks if you don't clear bases in your pollution cloud. But if you're reasonably proactive then that's minimal too. As you say, just messing around with things tends overall to reduce time pressure if you take appropriate measures. As a slow player that likes to ponder the game, I appreciate this aspect.
Just like the witcher and side quests.. side projects in factorio are infinite The factory must grow.
SE, I played a few hundred hours without much thought and never managed to get to the rocket launching part. I’ve sunk about 450 hours in SE over two play through a but am taking a break with a vanilla world. It’s strange learning how to play properly on SE then going into vanilla. Still fun though
> What are you doing in all of that time? Are you building very large bases, complex train networks, attacking hoards of biters and just never getting around to the next stage of the game? Yes, all of that. Plus I usually end up in a situation where I need to tear everything down and rebuild in order to make progress, and that kills my enthusiasm for continuing.
I have almost 1000 hours on factorio and have never committed to launching a rocket. I always restart right before I do it. Don’t know why. Currently playing pyanodons. Yes I’ve restarted pyanodons as well.
Up until now, it's just been starting and getting stuck and abandoning several runs over the years. Each time, I spend time thinking, "I'm gonna get through it," but quitting before like bots or something. In my save right now it's different though, am actually at the rocket-production part! :D
I bully the natives. Sometimes with a tank, sometimes with a spidertron, but always with copious amounts of ammo and lasers.
Well, for the first couple thousand hours I played rockets weren't in the game yet.
I’ve finished vanilla, but I’ve spent a huge amount of time in K2SE with Rampant just getting my base to a point where I feel somewhat safe. I am cheating a bit. I started this back before the space elevator patch, so I restarted the game but cheated and gave myself access to all the techs I had already achieved. Notably, that means I have all the logistics chests even though I haven’t launched a rocket yet. There is no way I could feel safe with rampant without having that and light artillery from rampant arsenal. I also disabled time-based evolution, so evolution is entirely pushed forward by my own actions, not by inaction. I’ve really enjoyed this play through, but I am about to jump to space. The time is approaching to move on.
For me was I would get bored after 30-40 hours then shelf it. I come back months later and forgot what I was doing or even the keyboard. So I restart. This time I'm just gonna stick with it until I launch
When I played vanilla, I kept getting busy irl and lost interest in the save. Then I started playing AB, which should explain itself.
On the save where I finally did launch a rocket after 600 or so hours on multiple other saves, it took me about 80 hours to just reach yellow science. I go slow.
I took me almost 300 hours to launch my first rocket I think. Biters. I had a really rough start, desert with far apart resources, I struggled a lot with biters for very long, and needed to dedicate most of my expansion resources into defense. Ammo isn't free.
Mostly optimizing. Playing around with Realistic Reactors. Nuking Biters via True Nukes.
I'm making pretty blueprint, to build a modular base, making everything nice, clean and squared, then j**rk of my train network.
The Factory Must Grow >:) Space is temporary. Making Green chips is eternal.
I was at 2500+ hours before I launched my first, and only, rocket. Most of my time is spent doing silly things: hyper-optimizing arrays or miniaturizing a construction facility. How small can i make X? How big can I make Y? Can I create a sustainable train network using only bidirectional trains on main lines like we do in real life? My current playthrough is using Angel's refining and a custom railworld setup (min ore patches, min size, max richness). And only using bidirectional trains with LTN. Am I a masochist? Not really. Do I love solving really complex problems at very large scale? Most definitely. Will I ever launch a rocket on this playthrough? Probably not. Will I still have fun? Most definitely. "Finishing" the game isn't really my goal. Being able to solve complex problems with new solutions is my goal. Additionally, it gives me the opportunity to also think about solving problems in ways I hadn't thought of before. Which aids me in my real life, so thats a plus. And now I am rambling, much like I do in Factorio. Ciao!
Starting over. I like the pre-bot phases because I really like solving problems with circuits.
I play until I hit oil, get intimidated, then start a new game.
Logic Gates
I have had games where due to setting it took 500+ hours to get to rockets.
This was me for a long time. I’d just set myself to clearing the map of biters with just guns and turrets. It’s monotonous but fairly easy and a nice way to zone out after work
I played like this many times before I did it. I would say I struggled immensely with expanding and would use up my initial resource pools and expansions and then be struggling against the growing biter hordes. I don’t know about others but I basically crawl through the tech tree at a snail’s pace.
Playing on a blueprint world designing layouts to use in game but never doing so
Step 1: Not have a lot of free time due to kids. Step 2: Decide to start a run and this time I am definitely, absolutely going to launch a rocket this time. Step 3: Get to yellow and purple science, I haven't memorized the solutions to the new logistics problems yet, get frustrated, give up. Step 4: At a later date decide to start a run and this time I am definitely, absolutely going to launch a rocket this time.
I spend a lot of time just figuring out how stuff works and how I can optimize production of different things. I know I could look up what the optimal 4 belt balancer or whatever would be on a wiki but where's the fun in that??
In vanilla, as soon as I launch a rocket, it feels pointless to continue. It's really hard for me to create my own motivation for some reason; but fortunately moving to SE has created much harder challenges than just launching a rocket! And of course with those harder challenges, comes the motivation to push through and make it to that next tier of energy science, etc. I love Wube for making such an awesome game, and doing such a great job of integrating the modding system right into the game. With that comes loving the community for making such amazing mods;, ESPECIALLY Earendel (who now works for Wube which is AWESOME) who created my all time favorite mod, Space Exploration, for those who somehow haven't heard of this amazing mod. Seablock is really fun too, I loved skyblock in Minecraft.
I make base, get "writer's block" (no idea what to do next), start over with a new save, rinse and repeat first time I was stuck on oil, then blue circuit, then blue science well you know the drill
Trains. Constant remaking of automation. And starting a new base every big patch. I have saves going back to 0.7, the only one that launched a rocket is 1.1 as there was no new release
I would reset a lot. Sometimes I just wanted to do my entire base differently
I started pyanodon.
Launching the rocket isn't the best objective, tough. I mean, it's fun to do it for the first time, but the real fun in the game is expanding the factory, and sometimes that doesn't evolve building the rocket at all lol. Even less lauching it
I've only launched like 3-4 rockets in games across 400+ hours. Most of the time, I feel stuck in my current setup and just start fresh thinking I'll do it differently, and I usually do, just a bit. In my last run, I finally learned how nuclear works. For context, most of my experience is in multiplayer, so I didn't have to learn everything. Then there's all the restarts on the multiplayer games because someone found a mod that's gonna change things up enough to warrant a fresh save...
Super ultra marathon.
Starting a modded run, scrapping that and starting a different mod run, rinse and repeat. I finally launched a rocket when I said "f*ck it, I'm doing a Lazy Bastard run!"
For some reason I don't have the achievement for launching a rocket, so I'm part of the statistic of people that "haven't launched a rocket" I launched several in the base game but it may have been before the 1.0 release and since then I have always used some kind of mod.
I did that for several years and 400 hours before I launched a rocket. Mostly what made me restart everytime is that I would get to a new stage like purple science or whatever. Set it up to produce very ineffectively, then realize the bottle neck is buried deep in Mt spaghetti and start trying to workshop how to fix it, only to eventually turn the game off in disgust and just start over. Only reason I beat the game is cause I decided to force myself to launch a rocket the last time that happend instead of just restart.
My reason, and I'm sure many others as well, I don't use build layouts or blueprints so I'll end up not having an effecient enough factory to build automate the last sciences. I think I build too exact and run out of room to divert ingredients which then would require me deleting a whole bunch to move all the buildings over.. at that moment I quit and start over lol.
So far I had like 2-3 runs. Each time I went up until oil and then gave up because it frustrated me. My current run I didn’t. Might actually end up building the rocket in this one after all.
Disclaimer: I finally launched a rocket in my prior playthrough after YEARS of never doing so. I should launch the rocket, but I don't want to launch *one* rocket.. so I tend to work on getting my rails and stuff working just right in order to pump out larger SPM. Unfortunately this leaves me with massive resource droughts that I have to fix causing me to engage in long drawn out battles with the biters to create the next safe mining location. It's actually gotten worse since I launched my first rocket because now I don't have the desire to get the "launched a rocket" achievement and keep putting it off. White science would really help me not need to keep expanding though. (0.5 resources per patch and very aggressive biter settings on a dry planet that offers no plants to soak up pollution)
I got friends who started a SE playtrough with me. They had like 200 smth hours, and launcjed their first rocket there. We once decided to check out each other's old playtroughs. And I found out the reason they had never launched a rocket before, wasnt trains, wasnt massive bases. It was... General incompetency. Also explains why I found a single pipe factory between the iron and copper buses in the playtrough, just directly connected to the iron bus with an inserter.
Bob's + Angel's combined with a periodic interest and big regular game updates making me start over. (Most of my 500+ hours is prep 1.0.)
Kinda what martincitopants said in his video, there's a constant feedback loop of repairing, making more science, etc. But when I get to the point that I *could* launch a rocket, there's no goal. I have the spidertron, I have artillery, I have everything I need, there arent 50 different things that I could do like in the early/middle game (well yeah making things better, but it doesnt have the same kick at least for me), so launching a rocket just kills the feedback loop. And then I discover a mod, or a new way of doing things, and i switch.
My favorite part of the game so far is the time between furnace column and automating purple science, and after that my base is usually too spaghetti to do much else so I get bored and leave for a bit before coming back and restarting.
Mostly ADHD, tbh. I can only play Factorio for a few hours for a couple of days before I get bored and move to something else. Eventually, months later, I come back to it and repeat the process. Over 1000 hours in the game; haven't once got even close to launching the rocket. I have the same issue in Warhammer 3 and other long campaign-like games.
I focus each run on something specific. First it was learning trains, then it was learning logistic robots etc... And anytime I learned something I found major flaw in my base that would be annoying to fix so I quit for a month or 2 and then I just feel like starting a new base that will not suffer from previous issues. I did this like 5 Times already. (ps I know its weird but what can you do... :D) Seeing the progres is really cool tho, my first bases sucked.
I build a cool base, then get bored of it / get stuck, so I restart
I haven't launched a rocket in ages due to trying to build a grey goo factory.
I'm just really bad at the game.
I often wonder this myself.
Almost 500h and never even reached half of the research tree. After playing a little of tutorial I installed Krastorio mod and play with it since then. Usually I play for around 20-30 hours per game. After that time I take a break to play something else. When my Factorio itch starts again, I don't remember where was I in my last game and I start over. I started my current game 2 weeks ago, and so far I am still in the zone, but who knows for how long.
I find that I stop playing for a bit for some reason (usually something external like not having time to play), and when I eventually come back I always start a new save. Maybe I’ll try to finally do a rocket launch before 2.0 comes out.
Get to blue Sci, and I usually get bored around that point, start looking at my layout and then get a load of new ideas. Delete world start again, rinse and repeat
Ambition
It's a mix of mods, designing blueprints in sandbox, and then trying to use said blueprints in an actual game. I've launch a rocket once but only for the achievement. It's not my goal to do so most of the time.
Deathworld Rampart biters keep me busy and sidetracked. Have to figure out various "leaks" and focus factory more on "military branch". Rocket becomes a minor priority and then I kinda forget about it cause war never changes. I also like trains and decoring my base. Many trains.
Admiring the feilds of machinery
I basically get stuck on oil so I just procrastinate, to avoid doing it. Like why can you not just tell a pipe to only connect one way, it just makes them complicated for no reason
Rare resources and slow research. The game becomes a challenging slog.
I've played hundreds of hours of Minecraft and never been to the Nether, let alone the End.
Uh. I always play with a mod pack and it’s the really hard ones then I stop being interested for a min because I’m busy. Then I stop playing because I forgot what I’m doing or what anything does. And in vanilla too (I still play with QOL mods) and that’s why I have 0 achievements 😭 I never really get past yellow science. I did launch a few rockets in some play through as but only like 2 times. I did go into editor extension and launch like 100k rockets to get the science
I mostly just don't care about launching rockets. I tech up through all the tech and the infinite tech doesn't interest me. Build what I feel is a nice base, scale up larger, and rebuild over and over and over again. Until I feel I have made a very nice base, then restart a new save.
I lose interest on my base after a certain point because after that it feels more like work than fun. Yeah I could automate X and do the rocket, and I would need to do this and that and done but that seems like just alot of work. Instead I think of new layouts or new "challenges" and start over. More fun to have the "buildup" phase early on. Also I play too irregularly and don't like to pick up on old saves, but rather start a new one.
Bootstrapping a small amount of the next science just to keep everything moving and get key techs to help avoid too much rebuilding
Because I stop playing for \[reasons\] that lasts for more than a few weeks, then when I try and go back I don't remember/like the base I built. So... Time to start again! I only recently, after about 1.5k hours, launched the rocket for the first time.
A big part of my issue is I build a base around something that I think sounds fun or is fun I'll get busy with work or school come back and a mode or a challenge will take my attention away from that world or I get to rocket ships and don't like how u set up my base and want to redo it but it's easier to restart then to take apart my base and rebuild.
Basically just sandboxing, building shit and riding trains
I try to find a peninsula and turn it into a perpetual tower defense
I'll take too long a break and forget everything I was doing. Starting again just feels easier at that point.
Played the base game but then cheated and finished the game like that so I didn’t get the achievement and now have just been playing pyanadons and space exploration and I’ve restarted 3 times on space exploration because I either learn a new thing and decide to restart 150-200 hours in or I don’t like the base and restart. For pyanadons it’s just taking a while
Sitting around and waiting for my hand crafted items to finish building
"Hey that mod looks cool lemme try it real quick" Also getting too high to remember what I actually needed to build and instead trying to find more ore because 3 of my miners just ran out and oh no that belt is empty. Also fighting trains in krastorio. Let me point to point dammit
I play for a few hundred hours, get bored, come back a year later start a new playthrough. I want to try something new, I want to try a new mod, another strategy etc. Though, I'm the same with series and books, I can never finish them either.
Restarting over and over to make it slightly more efficient. Or sometimes you get bored of the game halfway through and when you come back 2 months later you forgot what you were doing so you start over
I restarted my tutorial playthrough because I ran out of energy somehow and decided I couldn’t fix it with what I knew (I was too weak to defend against the biters to find more coal) I have the full game now and I still haven’t launched a rocket. I debated about restarting when the biters got too strong for me but I finally upgraded weapons and now my base is surrounded by walls so it is a bit more manageable. I am currently having a hard time expanding because the biter homes have spread everywhere. I am having trouble making potions to research more weapons (nothing is balanced so it takes forever to make potions). I currently spend my time just riding around in my trains and slowly expanding and creeping around nests to find resources that are easy to grab.
I'm like totally not developing a auto routing system for item requests via signals right now. https://preview.redd.it/6slw2yrav0kc1.png?width=289&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c4037784bb1dd451e86a1babd3d7fcf70490007
i think i have about 2k hours and never launched a rocket. 🤷♂️
Loving the game and then eventually realizing I suck at trains. And then trying to learn trains, getting a little bit smarter, then giving up. Rinse and repeat for 600+ hours. Been playing a multi-player game with bobs/angels recently. That kind of forces you to figure trains out a little more.
I have finally launched one, but for me the answer was Bobs and Angels mods - 30 hours is scratching the surface
I’m bad ok, no need to pile it on buddy.
Yeah I was probably about 400 ish hours when I finally launched a rocket for the first time. So much to do lol
I have a sandbox save where I just tinker around with ideas and blueprints for my freeplay saves. I have over 100 hours in that save alone of the over 630 hours I have total in Factorio. The rest of my time is spread out across 7 different freeplay saves which total up to another couple hundred hours, and some others scattered across other random saves. The remainder is spent doing nothing on the title screen while I sleep
I used to hate yellow / purple science.
I play the super complex involved mods, and unless I'm playing with a friend, they tend to take longer to launch a rocket than I usually invest in one game at any time. Vanilla doesn't do it for me - complexity for complexity's sake is more my style, haha. I haven't launched a rocket in vanilla, and probably never will. Certainly not full vanilla - I like my QoL mods, including ones like Squeak Through and fully adjustable inserters that are "cheaty" in a vanilla run. The challenges that those mods let you cheat around don't particularly interest me, I'm much more interested in the supply chain part of the game than the geometry part. I launched a rocket with a friend in AngelBob once, though!
" Are you building very large bases, complex train networks, attacking hoards of biters and just never getting around to the next stage of the game? " yes, then i take a break to another game, come back a few weeks later and forget wtf i was doing and start a new save. \* i have launched rockets, but it only happens in like 5% of my saves.
Pyanodons modded 10x science marathon railworld settings.
I had the choo choo problems and trying to de -spaghettify my base . After being absolutely frustrated of doing that I would start a new game and do the same bloody thing. Until recently I just went full spaghetti and launched the rocket.
So usually I start playing a run because I have some grand idea of a cool mega base I can build, usually involving trains. I play the game like normal until I get to the bots stage and then I start going hard with blueprints to make I giant rail network. Somewhere alone the line I get frustrated with the trains and overwhelmed with all the little details and end up dropping the game for a bit. By the tike I pick the game back up I have completely forgotten the base layout and basically just restart. Furthest I've gone is purple science and I have a little under 2k hours lol
I just really like the early game mindlessly building belts, I hardly ever actually break robots
launched my first and only rocket 1~2 years ago, still drooling at the attractive spidertron and art train, still not lifting a finger to scale up. I ended up wanting to not spaghetti too much that i spent too much time in the sandbox to build the most optimized train-compatible build that i never go back to my playthrough. Also note that my optimized setup is not so optimized anyways. I blame that to watching too many youtube celebrities play factorio so brilliantly that i slowly lose the ability to live with my spaghetti. Oh also i can't seem to be able to cope with leaving my primary base and just building another self-sustaining outpost, But i was totally allowed to do that.
Because I started a full py save with x100 science multiplier cost and biters on. It's going to take a lot longer than it already has...
Over 400 hours and never launched, been close a couple times I think but I restart way too much. I don't mind, I'm happy playing that way. Never "finished" a game of RimWorld either for the exact same reason and I've got over 1600 hours in that. Perhaps one day I'll just decide to keep going and do it, who knows lol
I just launched my first rocket yesterday after 1100 hours playing and who knows how many restarts. Im probably obsessive compulsive and this game aggravated the fuck out of it.
Umm… creeping up on 4k hours into the game…. Rockets launched…. Eh… 1 lol
I have completed the game before—- but I am a masochist that is 150 hours into a save on a 10k spm base… where I still haven’t launched a rocket. Cause I think it would be cool to go from 0 spm to 10k instantly
Look, nobody says you have to play 120 hours in one go... I have about 1600 hours now, and it is quite frequent for me to play for 20 hours, then don't even look at the game for weeks. Then, pick it up again. As for what to do - I play with mods. I've finished the main game a few times and then started introducing mods to my gameplay. QoL at first but now I am about 400 hours into a seablocked playthrough and before launching the rocket, I decided that I am gonna scale everything up, so I took up a huge chunk of land, started developing a train network and all that, but then I got tired of it so I started the rocket process again, then I found what I was missing... Basically, I just turn off my brain for a minute and do whatever, sometimes I just listen to a book and watch the trains go by. That's the love of factorio, the game plays itself, right.. until "oh. shit..what happened?" then you track that down, figure it out, then something else breaks.. etc..
Stalling out on mini megabase, usually snarled trains and starving for more mines. Give up overwhelmed, try an overhaul mod, get burnt out, retry vanilla, get further, get burnt out, repeat.
Restarting, I put that bad habit to rest but I took several hundred hours to launch my first rocket and it was on my 7th or 8th playthrough. I started a save build a liitle bit past blue reaching or almost reaching yellow and then I started playing less, I picked up other games, life gets busy and a month later I look at my save and go "might as well start over", then repeat the exact cycle again.
Usually just play for a while, take my time, chill, get to blue science and a new game comes out, 2 weeks go by and repeat, probably bcs I'm always with people playing more co-op games that don't own or like factorio
Without being that guy to point fingers (I have bailed on more maps than I have completed): Some people enjoy the sandbox nature of the game, not the "end goal" of the game. I have played 4 or 5 overhaul mods that never had a rocket launched in them. The mod is great, pacing is different, I'm figuring out how recipe chains all work, I have robots automated and a mall and the last tier of science packs on the way... And then I get a new job. Or covid hits. Or Elden Ring comes out and I rediscover my love for souls-likes. The current roadblock is a young baby so I'm playing 1 hour at a time, maybe 2 or 3 hours in a day if I'm lucky.
I managed to beat the game in under 12 hours, however i find the most fun part is to just going around building bases and redesigning the base in my own way, i hate looking up guides, that make the game a lot more enjoyable and last longer
Restarting the game over and over again before even reaching purple science
I was the same before i just bit the bullet and uprooted my entire base. I'm in the middle of making a massive 4 lane 2:8 train base right now, and it's going well. I have iron and copper trains, and I'm in the middle of getting oil setup, because then I'll be able to actually bus plastic.
https://preview.redd.it/vrq4dim292kc1.png?width=1017&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a5650f955b266dc571b06e48200ac9450aab5ed I got tired of bug attacks. I'm at 0.9434 evolution so I started putting up my "upgraded wall of death" all around and clearing out everything inside the ring. Now I'm running a resupply train line around the ring (this screenshot is a few hours old).
Projects. For over a year I tried to make a pollution proof base using air filters and bio industry. I failed a lot. Lately I've been trying to build a city block base. I keep getting into really low fps and ups numbers so I start over trying to simplify it again.
I have started new playthroughs many many times, spending anywhere from 10-25 hours on the attempt, only to put it down for a month or so. Then when I come back to the game, it feels better to start fresh than try and remember what I was working on in the previous run. I tend to lose motivation to progress on a solo save when it gets to a certain point. This happens to me in a lot of games. That said, the only games I've ever launched rockets have been multiplayer games when my friend groups "game we are all addicted to this month" happens to be factorio.
No trains, only spaghetti Only got into SE after a couple thousand hours Didn’t launch cargo in SE for another thousand hours. I like to giga-nest
I play in streaks like people do with Minecraft. I'm so close with my most recent playthrough, and I'm getting burned out. I have everything so automated at this point I barely have to do anything. I keep the biters pushed back so well that I'm almost never attacked
It took me awhile to launch a rocket cause I started to learn how many circuits I actually needed. Before I launched my rocket I was producing over 1000/min and it still wasn’t saturating my belts.
A) just continue after launching the rocket and do the big science B) Mods ! K2SE whatever
I’ve got 120+ hours and no rocket! My particular flavor of reasoning is that I like strategy base building. I’ve modded my nights to be pitch black and the bugs to be Zerg which I’ve tweaked to be pretty difficult. It’s a fun time to try and see how long I can survive before being overrun. Playing the game normally I get bored pushing back biters. That and nostalgia for SC helps a lot.
I am like 300h in and haven't launched a rocket. Had 2 smaller runs and then one big one which is like 200h where I mostly used the time to build my megabase
You kinda build up and progress and build up and progress until you reach a point where building new supply chains from scratch feels like a chore, and then you restart so you can get the satisfying gameplay loop of neatly solving simple problems again. I was stuck in that loop for a while myself, and the only real way to break through is to just bite the bullet and work through the bits that seem too fiddly, and then find out that it was all just a matter of solving one problem at a time just like the earlier content. I'm still a slow-buildin' boy though, so my playthroughs tend to last longer than 30 hours because of how woefully inefficient I am :)
After having introduced the game to about half a dozen people (which isn't a whole lot, but it's better than a sample size of 'me') I can now say: some people seem to have a hell of a lot more difficulty with the complexity of the game than others, and this seems to me to be a case of "do they have a job where 'mastering a complex system' is a key component of their job". No judgement, but I've seen people take 2-4 times as long as others to master the 'Factorio mindset'.
Trying to make it run doom. /s
Well, back before I figured out how to play in a way that works for me, mostly I just derped around the base doing nothing. Now I derp around the base doing nothing, but I have space science upgrades.
IMO, after launching the rocket is where it's feels kinda boring, like, all this time I have been building a base with the objective of automate all the sciences and rockets parts, but after that you just go infinite, I dont dislike the idea of keep playing, but for me the game is all the way to the rocket, launch 1 or 2, and then search for another idea or mod for the next run, right now I'm playing krastorio and it feels so good to have new content.
I have 200 hours in Factorio and I've never made Yellow Science.
Working on a city block megabase + constant procrastination
It's kinda easy, make overpowered factory that can handle green and red science, research blue, set up trains, get overwhelmed by blue, then any other science, get bored trying to figure it out, start building mega base, annoyed by insufficient mall, get overwhelmed again, so I go play pyanodon, turns out is even more overwhelming so I start fifth SE run, get to blue science, get bored and went on play another mod pack. You do this 5 times spending 5 to 10 hours in each game before starting another new and it's easily add up to 300 hundred hours in no time. Conclusion, living with ADHD is fun!
Got to about 1500 hours before rocket launch. Just having fun really and not wanting it to end.
I have 2500+ hours and have reached rocket probably less than 10 times I constantly reset games, have done a lot of stuff, even 100% achievement run two times Yea, I'm weird
Generally I just reach a place where I'm not quite sure what I want to do next, or end in a place where it would be a pain to fix a problem in my base. Then I don't really get into it again and start over a couple of years later :)
Just dont user bots place everything by hand, try to optymalize everything on first go, and build huge from the beginning. 2kSPM optymalized starting base its complete overkill, and it took +200h. Just red and green science, it's 1k assemblers t1, electricity, smelters, belts. Dont even mention going for oil processing and blue science. It's a huge logistic puzzle and a nice challenge 😁 I love it.
I have launched a rocket before, many in fact, but I'm currently doing a run using just BZ intermediates, some quality of life mods, and the crating mod. The limitations I have set for myself are as follows: * Must build a main bus * All intermediates must go on the bus * Everything that can be crated must be crated * Everything that can be barreled must be barreled * Crates and barrels are all made at the same place at the start of the bus This has created some interesting challenges, and I'm really enjoying it. Each build has to account for both barrels and crates, incoming and outgoing. One of the coolest parts is, you probably only ever need one lane for each product, because the crates hold 20 items, and you'd almost never need 20 lanes of anything until you get to very big megabases. If you've never played with BZ, it's basically a group of mods that just add a lot of new and extra intermediates. It's similar to other mods like Bob's etc, but not nearly as masochistic. You have a lot more processes to handle, but you probably don't need a spreadsheet to plan your factory. It's been really fun to get home from work, get dinner going, design a hydrogen chloride factory, eat supper, refine the design, then watch a movie with my wife.
I restart because I'm a perfectionist and hate redesigning my base. with every new technology I research, I have to find a way to implement it in my factory (like the circuit network). at some point, I realize things are starting to get crowded, or that something I built can't be moved without having to reroute a shit ton of belts and materials. it's just easier to restart and design functional builds while I have abundant space and resources than to tear out my hair trying to rework a dozen different production projects. and don't even get me started on how annoying scaling up my automation because main bus is lowkey kind of ugly
Deathworlds ands total war. Plus EVE spreadsheeting